Of the 46 oil and gas blocks were to be put up for auction in the 10th round of bidding under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), five are being withdrawn. Among them is a block in Punjab, where the Indian Air Force has objected to major exploratory work since it has a base there.

Exploring this particular basin would have helped to unlock the potential of the Himalayan foothills, running from Jammu to Uttarakhand, which, according to estimates by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) could have 150 million cubic meters of oil or oil equivalents buried beneath. The basin stretches across 72,000 sq km, of which this block, located in Ferozepur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur districts, has an area of 4,226 sq km.

The IAF has objected to exploration in the Adampur region of Jalandhar district.

"The biggest reservoir is underneath the area where the air base is located, so it is better to shelve the plan," says an officer in the petroleum ministry, who preferred anonymity. Confirming the withdrawal, T.P. Rao, who is supervising the NELP round for the DGH, says, "We have received the objections. Now we are in the process of withdrawing from this block."

Petroleum Minister M. Veerappa Moily had announced the NELP-X on January 12, claiming all permissions had been obtained. "We are working on the details of the objections received, and by next week we will be able to come up with a new list of blocks," says Rao. "If we are withdrawing from a few blocks, we will be adding some new ones as well. So the final list will have 46-50 blocks."

What about the four other blocks? "We are in the process of finalizing the four other blocks, where the defence ministry has some objections," he says.

The Punjab basin is considered one of the most promising on-land blocks in the country, but also one of the toughest to explore. Work in this basin started in 1957, say DGH officials.

There were initial seismic surveys followed up by more surveys in the 1970s using various sophisticated technologies. On-land exploration is difficult because of the density of the population there, as well as the terrain. The first well was drilled here in 1957/58 near the Jwalamukhi shrine.

Incidentally, within the Jwalamukhi shrine a flame burns - apparently using the natural gas reserves of the area. Before deciding to auction the block, the DGH had monitored the drilling of 20 exploratory wells there, six of them close to the shrine. DGH officials say they discovered two 'minor' pools of gas among them. These wells were drilled in the range of 1000 meters to 6800 meters.

Currently, only 22 per cent of Indian basins have been explored. "Even if an operator had taken up the Punjab block and subsequently relinquished it, we would at least have had more data and understood the basin much better," says a petroleum ministry official.